'She and Theo were married the following year, of course. Her best friend Tessa had married Thomas eleven months before because Pamela was in hospital for such a long time. And within a few years Dewhurst Manor was once again full of life and children and hope.'
'But whatever happened to Albert Askrigg?' her granddaughter said. 'Nobody ever talks about what became of him.'
'No? Well, that doesn't surprise me. He was a very evil man who did unspeakable things, the sort of things nice people don't talk about and prefer to forget.
'But since you asked me, I'll tell you what little there is to know.
'Albert Askrigg fell off the balcony even as Pamela did. But when everyone went outside, he was gone. He had got up and run off-'
'What? Anybody who fell that far and landed on the cobbles should have died, or at least have been seriously injured like great-great grandma!'
'Oh, he was injured all right,' her grandmother said. 'We know that because he was seen limping towards the moor, leaving a trail of blood all the way, one arm twisted at a macabre angle. The police were hot on his trail soon after, and not just with a few constables crashing through the woods, but with the help of more than five-hundred volunteers, all of whom were keen on getting their hands on Mr. Albert Askrigg.
'But they never found hide nor hair of him. Whether he crawled into some secret hiding-place and died, whether he managed to get away and flee to foreign parts, or whether the moor itself swallowed him up . . . we will never know, I'm afraid.
'But Pamela, my grandmother . . . ' The old lady chuckled to herself. 'A good many people thought she had gone a bit dotty where Albert Askrigg was concerned. She believed, with all her heart and soul to her dying day, that Albert Askrigg was some kind of demon that had sprung up out of the moor, that he was the moor, in a sense. She believed, too, that Theo himself was a similar spirit.'
She sighed, sadly. 'After granddad Theo died, she used to take me out to the moor near Haworth, and say, "This is where your grandfather truly lies. And here, too, lies Albert Askrigg, two aspects of the wild moor, forever at odds with each other, yet forever in balance. Oh, it may not seem that way in the middle of winter, when the moor becomes an empty, bleak, inhospitable and dangerous gallows-feld, or in the middle of summer when it is full of life, beauty and colour. But the two taken as a whole are both as necessary to life as sun, water and air."